Posts with tag NelsonMandela

Thanks to our friends over at TONIC News, we were just tipped off to the ethically sexy underwear from Pants to Poverty.

The British brand was inspired by Nelson Mandela, and started out almost as a lark, with 12,000 organic undies in someone's garage. They brought the panties to the Glastonbury Festival, then held a flash mob of people in their Pants to Poverty briefs, and moved on to the G8 Rally in Edinburgh.

By the end of the first year, they'd almost sold out the entire supply from the garage, and in the process raised a serious amount of awareness about poverty.

One man's trash is another man's...well, you get it. But $30,000 seems a little excessive for a wastebasket, no?

This week Danish supermodel Helena Christensen held a star-studded auction that raised over $50,000 for Food Bank For New York City and Chernobyl Children's Project International. The highlight of the evening was the live auction of a custom Vipp (the venerable Danish design company) bin by U2 frontman Bono which sold for--yes--$30K.

But, get this: Inside the "circular file" are unpublished lyrics from U2's upcoming album, including a tribute to Nelson Mandela on this 90th birthday. Hello!! Talk about a good investment. I asked Helena how she convinced Bono to donate something so valuable. "I got him drunk," she laughed.

Other participants in the auction included REM's Michael Stipe, Julianne Moore, Christy Turlington, Mena Suvari, and Frederic Fekkai.

Ouch. Supermodel or not, you hock a loogie on a cop at Heathrow, you have to deal with some ugly fallout. Campbell -- who was slated to emcee a portion of Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday concert -- was pulled when the legendary activist figure personally requested that she not be allowed to take the stage in London's Hyde Park.

We didn't know this, but apparently the supermodel was wearing a ball cap with '46664' (as in 46664 Concerts) embroidered on it at the time of her loogie arrest. That also happens to be the prison ID# Mandela wore for his 27 years on the inside.

The relationship between the supermodel and the human rights legend goes back almost a decade. Most recently, Mandela counseled Naomi for her anger problem after the 2006 cell phone incident. According to 46664 Concerts, Naomi was set to play "an integral" part in the festivities -- instead, she'll be watching from the nosebleeds.

[via Jezebel]